New physio Chris Skitt says midfielders Emyr Huws and Teddy Bishop won’t be rushed back to action as they continue their comebacks from the injuries which ended their 2017/18 campaigns.
Skitt, 32, who is currently in Spain at the squad’s week-long training camp which runs until Sunday, joined the Blues at the end of last month from manager Paul Hurst’s former club Shrewsbury.
"They’ve obviously spent an extensive amount of time out and consequently they need quite a significant amount of input from the physio side,” he told iFollow Ipswich regarding Huws and Bishop, whose seasons were curtailed by knee and hamstring problems respectively.
"A lot of people don’t account for that sort of stuff [they’ve been doing] today being physio, but it really is.
"It’s about managing their load through statistics, making sure that they’re nice and progressive in what they’re doing, that they don’t have a shock to their body and therefore stress another part of their body or the same injury.
"It’s very much a progressive period for them, building their load nice and steadily each week and looking to see if we can get them some minutes near the end of pre-season ideally.
"A lot of that will be determined on how they do through the progressive loading period.”
He added: "We want to see them all season, getting them back on the pitch and keeping them on the pitch, it’s massively important. Quite simply they won’t be rushed. We’ll take our time with them.
"We’ll make sure that when they’re back, they’re back in to stay. The old adage I use is, would you rather them in for two weeks and back out for the rest of the season or would you rather them have two weeks out longer in the first instance but be back in for the rest of the season? That’s certainly the way we work and that’s what we’ll be doing going forward.”
The Blues had extensive injury problems throughout last season and Skitt says that situation is being assessed.
"It’s very much an issue of looking through maybe what went on last year to get the injuries,” he added.
"We’ve started doing that and a lot of them have been freak injuries, but also looking at elements of how we can improve what we do and looking at the things that we do and seeing if we can improve them.”
He continued: "Ultimately the sport science, the strength and conditioning, and fitness side does lend itself directly to physio because it makes them fitter, makes them stronger and makes them more robust and protects them a little bit more against injury.”
We understand Skitt will be in a role between new fitness coach Nathan Winder and the first-team physios already at the club - Matt Byard and Alex Chapman - a gap which the existing staff had previously identified and which new manager Hurst also felt needed to be filled.
Meanwhile, we understand owner Marcus Evans has given the green light for significant investment to be made on updating the gym at Playford Road at the request of the incoming staff.
Work on updating the facilities at the training ground is already under way with the last large scale overhaul having taken place during Town’s time in the Premier League more than 15 years ago.
Elsewhere, former Hearts loanee Manuel Milinkovic, 24, who was recently linked with the Blues and a number of other clubs, is reportedly set to join Hull City from Genoa.